LocalHero, a mobile networking application, launched its premiere product for the iPhone at the recent TechCrunch event in San Francisco. LocalHero lets friends help other friends by identifying the people in a person’s social network who are nearby and have the right skills to assist. By matching a person’s location to the skills and interests of nearby friends, LocalHero finds the friends who are most likely to help while allowing people in the network to reach out and be a hero.

“While social networking applications have helped connect people in ways previously unimagined, there is currently no way to reach out to a select group of friends for help without broadcasting to the entire network or preselecting specialized lists,” said Ana Baltodano, CEO and co-founder of LocalHero. “With LocalHero, we have created a smart way for friends to take action and become real heroes to their friends and people nearby.”

LocalHero can be used for a range of requests, such as finding other friends who are interested in joining in a shared activity, to utilizing the knowledge and skills of friends to brainstorm and problem-solve, to more personal requests that you’d not want to share with strangers.

“I’m a co-founder of LocalHero because I’ve learned that you can do just about anything with a little help from your friends,” continued Baltodano. “I had the privilege of attending a class in business school with a group of highly accomplished executives who shared their knowledge and skills to help each other out. However, once we left the class, even though we were connected online, there wasn’t an easy way to continue that reciprocity that was so valuable to us all. That’s when I started to think about creating the LocalHero application.”